September 14, 2013

Digital games are socio-cultural practices and products, and gaming has become a mainstream, global cultural force. Applied linguists and FL educators have noted that gameplay is mediated by language use and social interaction, thereby also making it a potentially rich context for language acquisition. Vernacular games, or off-the-shelf, non-educational digital games, are produced by a diversity of countries in a variety of languages. Despite the interest in and availability of these games, ways in which their benefits can be harnessed to enhance FL learning have yet to be fully explored.

In response, the Games To Teach: Developing Digital Game-Mediated Foreign Language Literacies project will provide FL educators the resources (both material and pedagogical) needed to design, implement, and assess digital game-mediated learning activities that have the potential to develop FL multiliteracies. The project is being undertaken from 2010 to 2014 at the University of Arizona‘s Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy, a Title VI Language Resource Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The project is co-directed by Jonathon Reinhardt, U of Arizona, and Julie Sykes, U of Oregon.

Access game reviews, classroom materials for L2 learning activities, white papers and working papers related to digital games and L2 teaching and learning, and a blog with the latest news about the project at http://games2teach.wordpress.com

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Center for Applied Second Language Studies (CASLS)
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8:25 PM

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